BANKING & PAYMENT TECHNOLOGIES EAST AFRICA, 2009: Impressive line-up of international banking experts for Nairobi conference

A unique gathering of international banking experts is scheduled for Nairobi over 17-19 February, providing a unique educational forum for East Africa’s financial institutions at the Banking & Payment Technologies Conference. 25 international speakers will combine forces with 30 local speakers to create a high-powered conference faculty, headed by Conference Chairman Joe DiVanna, CEO of Maris Strategies in the UK, a leading banking think-tank.

In addition to DiVanna, three other speakers will be coming from the UK:

•  Prateek Shrivastava, Head of International Strategy at Monitise, will speak on “Bridging the financial divide – The opportunity for mobile”.

• Paul Nicholls, Sales Manager at KAL, will speak on ATM software trends for 2009/10

• Shaun Campbell, Business Development Director, Sub-Saharan Africa,  for Sybase365, will make a presentation on “The mobile-MFI ecosystem – an agent for change for the under-banked of Africa

Three speakers will be from the USA:

• Dr Raghavan Kunigahalli, Senior Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer of SBA Technologies will make a keynote presentation on “Branchless banking technology for risk-aware institutions”.

• Kunle Adetoro, Chief Technology Officer of Project Engineering will speak on “Banking on security in the African market”.

• Mohammad Alhammouri, Project Manager at SETECS, will present a case study on a mobile ATM system in Sri Lanka.

Bjorn Soderberg, an independent consultant from Sweden and co-author of “Mobile banking - Financial Services for the Unbanked”,  will make a keynote presentation on “Lessons from Africa’s mobile banking innovations”.

Two speakers are coming from the UAE:

• Mark O’Flynn, VeriFone’s Regional Manager for the Middle East and Africa, will speak on innovations in electronic payments.

• Brian Stobo, Vice-President of Hypercom Corporation will speak on “Practical payment technology”.

Mark Sibthorpe, CEO of CashDingo.com from Canada, is in the process of developing a banking switch for East Africa and will speak on “How a regional switch will change banking forever in East Africa”.

South Africa is contributing an impressive nine experts:

• Jim Baird, MD of ATM Africa, will speak on “Facilitating pre-paid with electronic voucher distribution”.

• Grace Mlimo, Regional Sales Manager for Clickatell will make a presentation on mobile solutions for African banks.

• Rob Muller of Fintech will speak on “A new age of paperless transactions”

• Gray Stopforth of PIC Solutions will speak credit scoring systems.

• Andre Niemand, Channel Manager of Postilion, will speak on “Innovating for electronic funds transfer success”.

• Theunis Botha, head of NIRPH, South Africa will speak on identification systems for security.

• Barry Coetzee, MD of iVeri, will speak on “The risk of innovation in payments”.

• Suleman Shaik, CEO of Direct Channel Holdings, will speak on “Contact centres in banking – what should be kept in-house and what can be outsourced?”

• Nolan John, Chief Operating Officer of ABSA Contact Centres will speak on “Service as a competitive tool”.

Speakers from other African countries include:

• Michael Malan, MD of Compuscan in Uganda will speak on “Credit bureaus - The pain or pleasure of data supply?”

• Paul Nilsen, GM of Business Connexion in Tanzania, will present a case study on the Umoja inter-bank switch in Tanzania

• Ike Nnamani, CEO of Medallion Communications in Nigeria will speak on the role of a telecommunications gateway in mobile payment services.

• Ophias Sherewa, MD of Transaction Payment Systems in Zimbabwe will speak on point of sale value-added services

One speaker will be coming from Russia, Faris Al-Mashta of BPC Banking Technologies, who will speak on “The lure of alternative payments: Capitalizing on growing opportunities offered by E-payments”.

Announcing the international speaker line-up, Sean Moroney, Chairman of AITEC Africa, organisers of the event, said: “We have never had such an extensive and impressive international contribution to one of our conference programmes.  At a time when Africa’s bankers have to make careful technology choices in the face of the international credit crunch, we are bringing to their doorstep a team of experts that can provide valuable advice and guidance.”